Last week, Troy Price was sworn in as the new chief of police in Vancouver. A 27-year veteran of the department, he takes the helm a month after Vancouver voters rejected a proposition that would have helped fill staffing shortages. Proposition 4 would have raised property taxes starting next year to pay for hiring 80 full-time sworn officers and other police positions, along with funding for new equipment, technologies and investments in other areas.
As the city’s population has risen in the past decade, so too has the demand for police services. According to city officials, more than 3,000 cases go uninvestigated each year as the call volume for police response has grown by more than a third since 2017. The Vancouver Police Department also has the second-lowest staffing levels of any city in Washington with at least 100,000 residents. Chief Price joins us to talk about his priorities and how he aims to fill police officer vacancies as the city faces a budget shortfall of more than $40 million.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Troy Price was sworn in as the new chief of police in Vancouver one week ago. He’s a 27-year veteran of the force and he takes the helm a month after Vancouver voters rejected a proposition that would have added 80 officer positions. The police department points out that it has the second-lowest staffing level of any mid-size or larger city in the entire state of Washington. And according to city officials, more than 3,000 cases go uninvestigated every year. Troy Price joins us now. Welcome to Think Out Loud.
Troy Price: Hey, thanks for having me.
Miller: This levy would have raised property taxes and used revenue, as I mentioned, to fund 80 new police officers, along with 36 non-sworn police positions. Then some money would have gone to other resources or other tools. Just to give folks a sense for the raising side of this, for a house worth $500,000 the tax increase would have been $200 in the first year and close to $600 more in the sixth year. What do you think would have been different in Vancouver if this had passed?
Price: That’s a pretty complex question, but I think I can break it down to a couple of areas. Number one, you’ve already stated the obvious: that we are one of the lowest staffed agencies in the country, when you talk about Washington state and then specifically Southwest Washington. We are 911 responsive, primarily, and that is our ability to go and answer that 911 call when someone needs service. What’s missing from that equation is the ability to engage in non-enforcement activities. Those non-enforcement touches with the community that our community truly values. Also, there’s the fact that there are cases that will go uninvestigated, simply because we do not have the staff to investigate them.
So, had that passed, we would have gone into a hiring mode and push up those numbers of folks who are out there answering the 911 calls, but also filling out some of the vacancies in our investigative units. Those are our detective units – things like our Children’s Justice Center, our Domestic Violence Prosecution Center, our Major Crimes Unit and Property Crimes Unit … and our Traffic Unit, I don’t want to leave that one out. Those are the areas that we have been marginally staffed for quite some time.
Miller: The levy failed by fewer than 5 percentage points or under 4,000 votes. Why do you think it failed?
Price: You know, that’s what we’re taking a look at right now and we’re engaging members of our community. I think one of the more glaring numbers is the fact that there were some 10,000 ballots that had no vote on it whatsoever – no “Yes,” nor “No,” for that proposition. And it was the last item on the ballot. I don’t know if that was a factor or not. But when you look at the fact that there were more ballots that were cast without any vote whatsoever, I think that’s pointing us in a direction. I’m just not sure what that direction is.
We are reaching out to different community groups and speaking with people individually, asking, “What did you think? Did you think we presented enough information?” So we hope to have some actionable data as we go into 2025.
Miller: And the possibility of, say, a slimmed-down levy in front of voters that soon?
Price: In 2025, I think there’s a possibility. After going through this process once, we did hear from some other entities within the criminal justice ecosystem who expressed some concerns, and we’re actually communicating with them to start looking at what our options are for maybe moving forward with something that addresses the other needs in our criminal justice system.
Miller: Are you talking there about county-level questions like the jail or courts?
Price: Certainly, we did hear from them – the Sheriff’s office, the county jail, the courts, the prosecutors, the defense bar. We heard from several different entities, and we know that there’s a lot to consider. Sometimes, if you look at just hiring police officers, you might move that needle a little bit, but the choke point just moves further downstream. So we want to make sure that all those interests are being represented as we consider how we will move forward in 2025.
Miller: A lot of people support the idea of a fully functioning law enforcement system in theory, but then seem to say “No” when it comes to an actual vote that would increase taxes. How do you sell voters on the idea of putting more of their money towards, in this case, more police officers?
Price: Yeah, and that is having those honest conversations about what has made our community great and what has attracted people to continue to move here. People are still moving here at a phenomenal rate. And asking people, “Are you satisfied with where things are, do you want to see us be more responsive?” I think it’s having those honest, open conversations, and having that opportunity to dispel myths or misunderstandings about what actually happens within the criminal justice system.
Miller: What do you see as the key myths or misunderstandings?
Price: A lot of people don’t know what is going on behind the scenes, behind the car that has “Police” written on the side, showing up at a scene of a crime and maybe taking someone to jail. They don’t think a whole lot about it beyond that point and don’t realize all the infrastructure that goes into making something like that actually work. And also the opportunities that we have to maybe change someone’s trajectory when we have the resources to actually apply.
This certainly isn’t everyone, but I think the general public has an idea of what happens in policing and in criminal justice. But once you stick your head a little bit below the surface, you see that there’s this humongous infrastructure there that needs to be tended and upgraded, just to handle the population size that we’ve become.
Miller: I mentioned that this levy would have funded 80 new officer positions. But meanwhile, there’s something like a dozen or so funded positions that are currently unfilled. What kinds of hiring challenges do you face these days?
Price: I think what we’re facing is pretty much what other agencies are facing, and that is, people in general don’t consider this as a profession they might want to go into – not at the rate that they did back when I joined some 30 years ago. Back then, you would show up to take a test to become a police officer and you might have 2,000, 3,000 people showing up for five or six positions. That has changed significantly. So, it’s made it a challenge for recruiting. We are adjusting our wheels to that terrain, and being more targeted and focused in our recruitment efforts.
Everyone likes to get a police officer that has been successful in another agency and bring them on board to your agency, if you can entice them away. And looking at our veterans who are rotating out of their military commitment and presuming this is a viable option for them. So, when we are able to get in front of someone and actually show them the city of Vancouver, show them the City of Vancouver’s Police Department, show how well our folks are trained, and show the working schedule, show our focus on officer wellness – we’re pretty hard to beat. You’re gonna be hard pressed to find an agency that can offer what we can offer. The challenge is just getting that information in front of people who are actually considering law enforcement as a career.
Miller: So at this point, you’re not just dealing with the failure of this levy for the future. You’re looking at a city-wide budget deficit right now. What does that mean for the department this fiscal year?
Price: Coming into 2025 we’ve already absorbed some of the cuts that we’ll have to take, given the financial outlook. And those were, by and large, unfilled vacancies that are going to just go away. As we move into 2026, we’ll start to look at cutting back on some of the services that we are currently providing, to try and take a savings in some of the overtime that occurs in patrol.
We’ve done this before. We did this back in the early 2000s when there was an economic downturn. In essence, we shaved down our investigative units, eliminated some of the investigative units, in order to fill patrol. So we’re able to meet our primary mandate, which is to have an officer available to respond to a 911 call ...
Miller: But then, fewer detectives to, say, follow up and actually close a case after that initial 911 call is responded to … if you boil it down, is that a fair way to put it? You’re prioritizing the core, which is responding to calls, but the stuff that may happen after that is less likely to happen?
Price: Depending on the type of case, absolutely. That is correct.
Miller: Vancouver, like the rest of the country, has seen a drop in reported crimes since the rise in the middle of the pandemic. But according to, I guess, anecdotal reports, there’s an open question about how many Vancouverites are simply not calling 911 right now because they don’t think anyone’s going to respond. Is there any way to know how often that happens, how much crime is simply not even being entered into the system?
Price: That’s the nearly impossible data to capture, because you just don’t know what you don’t know. One of the things that we try to do, and we’re seeing this with some of our migrant community members, is we want to encourage them to not be afraid to call us and please give us a call.
We’ve had conversations with various groups who’ve indicated that there are members in our community who are afraid to call. They have a misunderstanding of the functions of the police department in terms of our enforcement of federal immigration laws, and they think that we are essentially agents of our immigration department – we simply are not. So we’re going after those groups and just saying, “Hey, listen, please, don’t hesitate to call. We are here to protect all of the members of our community. We’re here to serve all the members of our community. It doesn’t matter how you got here. And your immigration status is of no concern to the police department.”
Miller: In an interview he gave to The Colombian in October, your predecessor, Jeff Mori, said that he’d run out of energy and he talked frankly about the mental health toll of being in law enforcement today. How would you describe that toll for the people in your department?
Price: You know what – I can’t think of a career that grabs you more and that affects you more. We are well aware of the fact that when people go home, they take the concerns of the job with them. And there was a time period when people thought that you absolutely do not take work home. And we certainly don’t want work affecting our families. But we do try to hire the best people, who are caring and concerned about their community.
So if you’re thinking about people in the community when you’re off duty, that’s OK. But we realize the stress that can put on our folks. And that’s why we’ve put together a fairly robust officer wellness program, so that our officers are in their best shape possible to go out and serve the community, and that they are given the tools to manage their off-duty time, so that they are able to rest, to rejuvenate, and come back and give us their 100% self on their next shift.
Miller: I have read that two Vancouver police officers died by suicide in the last two years. What can you do as the leader of the department to encourage office officers to actually take advantage of, for example, the officer wellness program you just mentioned, to avail themselves of the help that is available?
Price: I think, when we look at those incidents that you were mentioning, that has been part of what’s driven us so hard into officer wellness. And our deputy chief, Erica Nilsen, has been very proactive in making that happen. Also, developing a system by which officers are able to speak with their peers about personal matters and have those officers’ needs taken care of, in a way that gives them the confidence that this information is not being shared. It’s being kept private and they are still able to get the care they need, so that they can continue, and hopefully have a long and prosperous career.
Miller: Troy Price, thanks very much.
Price: Take care.
Miller: Troy Price is the chief of the Vancouver Police Department.
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